


The Answer to the Prayer I Hadn't Found

by Loki_Demon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5367842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Demon/pseuds/Loki_Demon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Non-magical modern AU in which Lily and Regulus get married and have a child. Written for the love of my life, who is the real-life incarnation of the love-child of Regulily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Answer to the Prayer I Hadn't Found

**Author's Note:**

> I am interning at the same school my dad used to teach AP Psych at and I get told all the time how great of a teacher he was. I dedicate this to him and everyone who knows what animal never forgets in addition to the love of my life.

Lizzie was 13 and mere weeks away from the start of her first year of high school when she overheard her father complaining to her aunt that she never wore dresses and skirts and insisted on “those t-shirts that make her look like a homeless orphan”. Aunt Petunia had, of course, shook her head, declared Lizzie utterly hopeless, and wished her father luck with the inevitable embarrassment he would have to face when he took Lizzie to her first day at school in loose fitting jeans and a Pokémon t-shirt. Aunt Petunia went on to ask Lizzie’s father what the name of her new school was again (as if she didn’t already know), seemingly only so that she could scoff at how utterly elitist he was to send her there, as if her nasty little son wasn’t going to the most absurd institution on the planet, solely because his father had when he was a boy.

After listening to her aunt prattle on a bit further, Lizzie ran upstairs and spent the night strategically ripping holes in her entire wardrobe to give the distinct impression that she didn’t know where her next meal was coming from and tearing the sleeves off her shirts. She used the shirt sleeves to sew together a bizarre patchwork dress with pockets and a built in pair of shorts. She put holes in that too, for good measure.

Thus Regulus found himself accompanying his daughter to the orientation of her prep school full of well-dressed and wealthy looking young men and women, not in the jeans and Pokémon shirt that Petunia had predicted, but in a dress literally made out of rags and full of holes, with her Pokémon t-shirt underneath. He grimaced at the other parents who were gawking at his Lizzie and silently cursed himself for thinking that procreating with Lily fucking Evans would be a good idea.

One of the administrators, a toad-like woman in a shocking pink dress with shoulder pads and little pastel flowers cleared her throat nearby them. “Ahem. What an…interesting ensemble you’ve chosen for the day Miss…?”

“Evans,” Regulus said, staring the woman down. There was firm pride in his voice as he followed with, “She made it herself. She’s quite the artist.”

“I see,” the woman replied. “Artist indeed…I do beg your pardon, I have forgotten my manners! I am Ms. Umbridge, the Dean of Students here at Hogwarts Preparatory.” 

Regulus raised an eyebrow. “Dean of students? I didn’t know we had a dean of students…Aren’t you all in charge of the students?” 

Umbridge let out a chilly laugh. “But of course. I am merely here to oversee student affairs and ensure that everything is in proper order.” She eyed Lizzie’s outfit once again. 

“Ah. You’re new then? They don’t tell us anything…I teach here.” 

“Oh you do? So sorry, Mr. Evans, I had no idea. I have not had the pleasure of, ah, being introduced to everyone yet.” 

“It’s Black. My name is Regulus Black.” 

“Oh, I’m ever so sorry, I thought Miss Evans here was your daughter.” 

“She is.” 

“Oh. How unusual that she shouldn’t have your name.” 

“Yes. Right. Well. Pleasure, I’m sure.” 

Umbridge stood and continued to smile sickeningly at the two of them, seemingly determined not to be dismissed. In the end, though, Regulus’ condescending stare won out, as it always did, and she giggled again, wished them well, and went on her way. Well—as it almost always did. Regulus’ most severe look had done nothing to dissuade his daughter from wearing that monstrosity to school. He was lucky enough that she was here in the first place—she had originally been opposed to the idea of a prep school, but it had been Sirius, surprisingly, who had convinced her of its “unforeseen benefits”. 

Regulus did not know what was said during that conversation and he was not looking forward to finding out. 

Lizzie looked over at him. “Well she was a fucking delight.” 

“Watch your mouth,” Regulus said robotically, as if it was something he had to say every single fucking hour. “You’re in company.” 

“Fucking company,” Lizzie muttered. 

“Fucking stop.” 

Lizzie looked up at her father. He turned to her and grinned and she giggled. “I’m going to go now. You can like, talk to all the soccer moms or whatever.” 

Regulus shrugged. He got on rather well with the soccer moms. 

______________________________________________________________

A few weeks later, Lizzie declared that she no longer wished to be called Lizzie. Instead, she was answering only to the nickname Red. She announced this to Regulus as he drove her home from school. 

“Red? But…your hair isn’t even red.” 

“Oh, well I didn’t realize you had to have red hair to be called Red. I must have missed when they made that a law.” 

Regulus sighed. “It is not a law but there isn’t really a point to calling yourself Red when you’re not remotely, is there?” 

Lizzie—Red—raised her eyebrows at him. “That’s racist. Also, there isn’t really a point in you calling yourself Black when you’re about the whitest man ever, but I’m still expected to call you Mr. Black every day at school.” 

Regulus opened his mouth and then shut it again. His instinct was to insist that that was obviously not the same, but having spent enough time around Liz—Red—and Lily, he knew better. It wasn’t the same. Of course it wasn’t the same. But it was useless to assert that without a proper argument as to why. 

Red turned up the radio and they rode in silence for a while, excluding the occasional awkwardly sung lyrics. She was staring intently at her phone when Regulus suddenly said, “It is my name.” 

“Um?” 

“Black. It’s my name,” Regulus repeated triumphantly. “I did not decide to call myself that, I was born with that name.” 

Red shrugged. “You could have chosen a different name. I did. Imagine if I hadn’t and you all had to call me Red Black,” she said and chuckled to herself. She didn’t look up from her phone once. 

______________________________________________________________

When they arrived home, she announced her new name to her mother, who was a great deal more gracious about the news. Red declared that she wanted lobster in celebration of this new revelation about her identity and Lily countered with buying her that iron man t-shirt she had been eyeing for the past month. Regulus, a bit miffed that his wife was so unconcerned by the fact that their daughter no longer wished to be called by the name they had fought long and hard to reach an agreement on, suggested they do both. 

Lily narrowed her eyes at him as Red smiled and said, “I’ll need some hair dye, too, dad,” before running up to her room. 

So in an entirely inefficient and roundabout game of screwing each other over between her parents, Red got to celebrate her nickname-hood at the Red Lobster by the mall, before going to Hot Topic for the Iron Man shirt and red hair dye. Her mother helped her dye it in the sink and put little gold streaks in it. Regulus contemplated disowning her when he saw her. 

“She’s not even in Gryffindor!” 

Red rolled her eyes. “I’m not red, I’m not in Gryffindor, I’m not old enough to drive. So many rules!” 

“Wait, what?” Lily asked. “When were you driving?______________________________________________________________

Overnight, the entire Hogwarts population got word and started calling Lizzie Red and continued long after the dye wore off. Her classmates, teachers, administrators who barely even knew her name used to be Lizzie—everyone called her Red. The cafeteria lady, who still called Regulus–who had been working at the school for fourteen years now—Reginald, referred to his daughter as her “Red and Butter”. She had apparently inherited her mother’s popularity and ability to make a first impression. Even Petunia called her Red without hesitation. Regulus was the only person who was not adjusting as well to the change.

But although he found the whole thing somewhat baffling and irritating, Regulus didn’t see any reason to stop calling her Lizzie until she stopped calling him Mr. Black. She had taken to calling him “Agent Coulson” as she passed him in the halls and her core group of friends—some of whom, almost inexplicably, were seniors—had caught on to it. In no time at all, everyone in his AP Psychology class was calling him Agent Coulson just as quickly and easily as everyone called his daughter Red. He was lucky that his college prep and honors students were still scared enough of him to call him Mr. Black, but they were also too nervous to tell him precisely why he was Agent Coulson now and all the AP kids gave him a new reason every time he asked. His favorite was that he was a spy for the government doing psychological experiments on them all. 

Red made him watch Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with her—every single episode—until they got to Sky’s name change in the opening of the third season. Apparently Agent Coulson was the only one who kept calling her Sky after she went back to her given name, Daisy. Another important thing to note: Red was watching some truly disturbing television. Regulus was impressed.

__________________________________________________________

Regulus walked into his AP class the next day with a fistful of papers in his hands and addressed his students. “I have here passes for an extension on any homework assignment of your choice for any reason. And all you have to do to get it is thank me.” 

“Thanks! Thank you!” The class immediately chorused.

One young woman in the back of the class, Regulus’ brightest student, said “Thank you, Mr. Black.”

Regulus grinned at her and handed her a pass. “Thank you, Mr. Black,” the boy sitting next to her said, holding out his hand.

“Mr. Black!” shouted Jackie, a girl from the front row. “Hook me up!”

In about two minutes, every student in the class had a piece of paper. “If any of you call me anything other than Mr. Black again, your pass becomes void. I’ll be keeping track.”

“But, Mr. Black!” Jackie protested. “Does that mean we can’t call you T-Rex?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Jackie held up her pass and sighed. “Alright, you might as well have this back then, Rexasaurus.”

Regulus plucked it out of her hand. “Thank you, dear. Anyone else?”

No one said anything. They could always call him names behind his back and still turn in that dreaded midterm paper after Christmas break. It wasn’t worth it. Jackie looked back at her classmates reproachfully. “What animal never forgets, y’all?”

Her classmates giggled, but only the girl from the back of the class, Sarah Golightly, responded. “A hippo.”

Jackie snorted. “Teachers pet. Y’all know it’s the T-Rex, because his head is so big.”

Regulus raised a hand to his head and furrowed his brow. “My head is not big. It’s proportional.”

Jackie winked at him. “I’ll bet.” Regulus cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows in alarm as Jackie’s friends giggled.

“It’s an elephant, you simpletons,” Tony said, breaking the tension. “Elephants never forget. Cuz their ears and stuff.”

Regulus gave the kid a grateful look and said, “No, Sarah has it precisely right. Hippos never forget. Because memory is stored in?

“The hippocampus, Back in Black!” Regulus raised his eyebrows. “…Mr.”

“Yes, thank you, Jason. Now. Today, we will be learning about defense mechanisms. Who can tell me what denial is? Yes, Brad?”

“It’s when you pretend something you don’t like didn’t happen. Like when you tried to pretend that Jackie wasn’t laying it on thick up there.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes. “Yes, thank you Brad.”

“Because it made you anxious,” Sarah chirped, glaring at Jackie. “We use defense mechanisms to mitigate things that cause us anxiety.”

“Oh! Like when you said your head wasn’t big!”

“Nah, that wasn’t denial, that was narcissism. Jackie was obviously talking about T-Rexes and Mr. Black thought she was talking about him.”

“It was personalization.”

“Well, first of all, Tony, personalization is a cognitive distortion, not a defense mechanism. And secondly, since you all seem to know so much about defense mechanisms already, I’ll just skip to the quiz.”

Everyone in the class groaned. “Way to go Brad.”

“Yo, this is some straight up displacement, Mr. B! …lack.” 

“Great use of displacement, Tyler. See? You’re prepared.” 

“We need your brilliant teaching skills, Mr. Black! You can’t abandon us like this!” 

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Ms. Pope.”

“Yeah, apparently,” Jackie muttered. 

“Can you tell this half of the class you believe in us, Mr. Black? So we get better grades than those losers? The, like, self-fulfilling prophecy stuff? 

“I don’t believe in any of you, actually. You’re being handed a quiz on information you haven’t formally learned yet. It’s unlikely you’ll do particularly well.” 

“I believe in you guys.”

“That is a mistaken belief, Tony. But go on. This is going to be 80% of your grade.” 

“WHAT?!”

Regulus smiled. He could still control the rascals in his AP class after all. If only Lizzie were as easy…


End file.
